I know someone who lost their beloved partner of 40 years. They’d been together since they were young, had many children, great grandchildren, all the rest, you know, totally devoted, and then the wife died, and the partner said it was the greatest pain they have ever known – the greatest pain they have ever known!
What’s the analysis of this? This is hard to hear. What’s the analysis of this? This is the same analysis for the Buddha as when you don’t get the cake you want, or when you get the red light: we suffer because attachment didn’t get what it wanted. It sounds like ridiculous to talk this way, but this is the analysis, you know?
The trouble is we hear it as blame: “Oh, you mean it’s my fault, is it? Oh, I see.” No, it’s nothing to do with blame, even though we can’t help but hear it as that.
This is the analysis. If this person I’m talking about, with his beloved wife for 40 years, was a bodhisattva – which means a person who’s gone beyond delusions, who’s done the job that Buddha says we can all do – they wouldn’t do what we would call “suffer.”
This is hard to hear. Let’s talk about this for a minute. What does it mean suffer? What does it mean suffer? It’s a huge word, you know?
Well, forget even the subtler levels of suffering that Buddha talks about – forget those. But looking at the grosser level even, this is already a revelation to us. When we lose our beloved, or when we lose our broken cup, or when we don’t get that coffee the way we want it, these are all just levels and levels and levels of attachment not getting what it wants.
Don’t hear this as mean – we can’t help but hear it that way, and I say it so bluntly it sounds like it’s mean. It’s not mean – it’s an analysis, you know?
If we didn’t have attachment, if we didn’t have aversion, if we didn’t have jealousy – and this is very hard to imagine because we consider these are normal parts of a normal person, and this is why this is such a radical view and it’s hard to hear it – we’d be free of anxiety or fear and we’d be joyful.
If we’d realized emptiness and gotten bodhichitta, if we were an arya bodhisattva, a highly evolved person, we could easily have partners and children and great-grandchildren and the rest. You don’t have to walk around like a saint, you know, walk around with a halo, you don’t have to be a monk or a nun. You could have 14 husbands if you wanted, you know, if you’re a bodhisattva.
If you’re a bodhisattva, that means you wouldn’t have attachment, that means you’d be joyfully, radiantly, blissfully satisfied in yourself – that’s what it means. That’s what it means because attachment is coming from dissatisfaction.
You would be utterly satisfied, you’d be a joyful, radiant person – try and imagine that. So when your beloved of 40 years dies, there would be sadness there, no question. The Dalai Lama, when he was talking about his mother dying, there were tears, so we go, “Oh he must be suffering.” Well, no – and this is the thing that’s hard to hear, but let’s look at it.
Let’s say we see someone out there who’s suffering: we see the dog being kicked, or we see the war, or we hear about this latest group of people who’ve been murdered on Bondi Beach, in Australia, the latest maniac gunman –Americans get off the hook this time, it’s Australians.
We read about the suffering, we see all the photos, and then we have compassion, right? We do have compassion. And then we go, “I’m suffering now when I see the suffering of the world.” Or we’ll say, “I’m suffering now because my wife of 40 years has died.”
Well, no, they are not the main causes of suffering. And this is where I think having a theory is incredibly necessary – having an analysis, a theory.
If you want to be a good cook, you can play it by ear and chuck in a few eggs and cross your fingers – you could do that, nothing wrong – but if you want to be an expert, you need to understand the theory: you need to understand the function of eggs, the function of flour.
And we all know the more you know the theories, the better cook you will be, the better carpenter you will be, the better musician you will be. And for the Buddha it’s just the same if you want to be a happier, wiser, compassionate human being. You need to know the theories, have the analysis.
To start from an analysis and a theory is the starting point of anything, but we often don’t think that when it comes to becoming a happy person.
So, Buddha’s analysis? We have negative, neurotic states of mind and positive ones: the two main categories. We suffer because of the presence in our mind of all the neuroses – states of mind that in our world we consider normal, so normal that you’d be abnormal if you didn’t have them.
But Buddha has found that we can rid all the neuroses from our mind: they’re adventitious, they’re not at the core of our being. That’s a pretty outrageous statement, you know? There’s no view like that in modern science – in neuroscience or psychology. You’d be mentally ill, as far as those views are concerned, if you didn’t have anger or jealousy or low self-esteem or attachment – but this is the Buddha’s view.
If we suffer, it’s because we have these neuroses. And it’s normal, join the universe: we suffer because we have the negative states of mind, the neurotic ones, the nonvirtuous ones, the deluded ones – it’s very clear. It’s stated in the Four Noble Truths, Buddha’s simple presentation of suffering and its causes: it’s very straightforward, they’re the cause of suffering.
Then you’ve got the second category of states of mind, which are the virtuous ones: love, compassion, kindness, generosity. By definition, they cannot cause suffering. This is something that if we can just hear it as a theory is a revelation. We can then apply it to our minds. We’ve heard it four million times but we can’t hear it. We can’t hear the simple statement: the virtuous states of mind cannot cause suffering – they can only cause happiness.
We know we suffer – and that means mentally, or just the ordinary suffering of having a headache or a knee ache, or your wife dying after 40 years, you know? Then we think, well, what’s the cause of my suffering?
“Never known such pain,” this person said. So what’s the cause of that pain? Well that person says it’s because of love. And that’s what the world thinks: you suffer because you love somebody. That’s what we say, that’s what we say, isn’t it?
Well, for the Buddha, love is in the positive category. It’s affection. Love is a delight in the happiness of another: it’s a virtue and, by definition, cannot possibly cause you suffering. But our trouble is we lump the word “love” along with a component called “attachment.” We assume – and that person who said that assumes – they’re the same thing. That’s our problem in our culture.
When we say love, we include wanting them to be happy – that’s the virtue, that’s called “love” – but we put into the mix the one called “attachment,” which is the main voice of ego, which is this bottomless pit of neediness, this lack of wholeness, that’s rooted in fear, the main voice of ego-grasping, the source of all our pain. We don’t even identify it as separate – that’s what’s incredible.
We suffer because of attachment – our attachment, this bottomless pit of neediness within us that is a junkie in us that can only cope with everything being nice – this is its job.
Conclusion: Using Buddha’s analysis, we can begin to unpack our minds, identifying what’s there, distinguishing between the delusions and the virtues, and slowly, slowly molding our mind, as Lama Zopa Rinpoche puts it, into the mind of a happy, wise human being.
Who doesn’t want that!